The OSINT Newsletter - Issue #53
The latest and greatest in OSINT news, tools, tactics, and techniques
👋 Welcome to the 53rd issue of The OSINT Newsletter. This newsletter covers OSINT news, community insights, tactics, techniques, and tools to improve your investigative skills. The goal is to support the growth of the OSINT industry, develop proficient investigators, and emphasize the ethical uses of open source intelligence.
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⚡ Learn how to use Phunter for OSINT investigations
⚡ The OSINT Newsletter - Issue #52
Let’s get started. ⬇️
OSINT News
📰 OSHIT: Seven Deadly Sins of Bad Open Source Research
Bellingcat discusses common pitfalls in open source research, including issues like failing to verify sources, letting biases influence findings, not archiving materials, and not using tools properly, which can compromise the integrity and effectiveness of investigations
🎩 H/T: Tristan Lee, Kolina Koltai, Giancarlo Fiorella
📰 The Ultimate Not Really OSINT Compendium
Claudia shares a list of free open source intelligence resources for investigators from various backgrounds. It includes tools for person search, business search, and location-specific tooling.
🎩 H/T: Claudia Tietze
📰 My OSINT Blueprint - Methodology & Tools Part One
Aaron shows his step-by-step process for an OSINT investigation in this post on LinkedIn. This guide is subject-agnostic, making it a must-read for all new and intermediate investigators.
🎩 H/T: Aaron Roberts
OSINT Tools
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🔎 dangerzone
If you’re investigating information found in PDFs or PDFs themselves, consider trying dangerzone. dangerzone will turn a potentially malicious PDF into a safe one. It essentially deconstructs the PDF, sanitizes it, and reconstructs it in a sandbox.
🎩 H/T: Freedom of the Press Foundation
🔎 PDF Investigator
On the note of investigating PDFs, PDF Investigator is a GPT specifically designed to help you investigate the content of PDFs, including the metadata. Use this tool after sanitizing the PDF with dangerzone.
🎩 H/T: Louisiana Private Investigations & Intelligence Agency
🔎 Playbook
If you’re in OSINT, you know how much time is typically spent investigating images. Playbook is a tool that uses GPT to aid in your research of images. Originally designed for web designers, this tool allows you to ask follow-up questions in your search and refine using AI (a feature that is clunky or missing in normal search engines).
🎩 H/T: Jessica Ko
🔎 Frame by Frame
If you don’t try any other tool on this list, try this one. Frame by Frame allows you to click on any video on the web and use the arrow keys to view it frame by frame, seamlessly. This works on YouTube, TikTok, and any other video hosting platform.
🎩 H/T: Fast Forward
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